Advances on research of RNA interference

RNAi is a phenomenon of gene silence induced by double-stranded RNA(dsRNA) that is homologous to target gene. Now it is easy to obtain small interference RNA(siRNA), and siRNA is (often)transmitted into organisms by microinjection. RNAi includes encoding region RNAi and promoter region RNAi, which can be used to investigate gene function by degrading a special mRNA target in a cell or organism and thus knocking out or knocking down the level of the encoded protein. They have been used to the analysis of silkworm gene function. With the development of the technique, RNAi can be widely used to genomic analysis, medication target screening, disease treatment and so on.